^197:1 Hiouen Thsang gives us the best contemporary picture we possess of Buddhist India. If it were not for him and the other Chinese pilgrims; who visited India, we should know nothing of the history of that country for several centuries. Hiouen Thsang, in addition to his own contributions to the theology of Buddhism, brought back the materials with which the purely Chinese sects, such as Tendai and Kegon (Avatamsaka), were afterwards established.

^197:2 Sozu, a Japanese ecclesiastical title equivalent to our canon or archdeacon. The lawlessness and want of discipline among the monks, whose numbers were very large owing to the indiscriminate patronage of the faith by devotee sovereigns during this period, gave rise to many attempts to regulate the Buddhist clergy by the appointment of overseers or superintendents.

^198:1 There were actually four strains of the Hosso in Japan.

^198:2 Gyogi Bosatsu, a celebrated Korean priest (670-749), who enjoyed great influence in Japan. It was he who administered Baptism (Kwanjo) to the reigning emperor.

^198:3 Ryobu Shinto, an amalgamation of Buddhism and Shinto, which was not done away with officially until the beginning of the Meiji period.

One of the natural consequences of the adoption of the system known as Ryobu ("two parts") was that, by treating the native gods of Japan as merely incarnations of one or other of the Buddhas, and as therefore entitled to the worship of the Buddhists, the Japanese were enabled to introduce into their Buddhism many non-Buddhist elements. Thus Amida and. Vairoc'ana, both of them symbolized by the Sun, came to be identified with Tenshokodaijin, the "Heaven-shining-mighty goddess," from whom the Imperial house claims descent. (The change of sex is unimportant, for many of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, e.g. Kwannon, are bisexual.) Thus, too, Buddhism, which absolutely forbids the taking of life, gained a Buddhified god of war in Hachiman, and Buddhist monks, who worshipped the god of war, could with quiet consciences take to fighting. Nichiren ("Seigoroku," p. 132) speaks of Tenshodaijin and Hachiman as the true lords of Japan, revealed in later times as Buddhas, and Hideyoshi, who openly avowed his desire for deification, built for himself a temple in which he intended to be worshipped after his death as Shin Hachiman, the new god of war.

^199:1 For this, see the, chapter on Hosso in vol. i. of "Bukkyo Kakushu Koyo."

^200:1 It is interesting to note how the different schools of the Mahayana nearly all present us with a Triad or Trinity. Between this Trinity of Locana, Maitreya, Manjus'ri, and the Pure-land Trinity of Amitabha, Avalokites'vara, and Mahasthamaprapta there is only a difference of names. The concepts are identical.